My dear Friend

Yesterday morning I was driving to the Caspian Sea on the Chalus road at 7 am. Autumn was the same as every year: yellow, red, green and ochre; dignified, calm, like those in their seventies, mature, not like me who has a 7-year old within her soul.

The tape played Shajarian’s "night, silence, desert". With every sonorous and choked note that escaped the tar [lute], my heart made a quick beat and I choked, as if I wanted to make a noise and could not. Or I felt that the thick bass cord is trying to project its sound beyond the deep and broad desert night, and cannot. So it suffocates within the realm of a small dark circle, perhaps as long as the distance between the sound prison [the tape] and the core of my ear, or a bit further.

By the way, do you remember what happened two nights ago? We were barely ten persons, talking cautiously, and sometimes in shock: "what is to be done?" I don’t know why all along the journey you travelled with me in my loneliness. I talked to you, as if you were taking the dish from my hand and placing it on the table. Giving me a hand? Sometimes you laughed. Most of the time there was a silence.

"Night, silence, desert" accompanied me through my whole journey in the twilight of dawn, between two lines of trees. With the first cold autumn wind shivering trees shed their leaves and the journey continued.

My heart was full of something I didn’t understand. I wanted love, to love despite the hatreds! Whom and what? My heart, this little red mass, had enough room to love the sky and everything under, or above it, the created and the creator, children and friends. And you who were with me all along the journey. Sometimes with a small cup of tea, sometimes with a dish of leftovers, and my questioning eyes "isn’t there anything edible?"

We were barely ten. We had expected to be at least 50, but were not. You know better why not. In night, silence and desert, the thick and sonorous sound of the cord revolves in a small circle, forms rings, spreads, resolves, evaporates and no one hears it. The sound has a range no more than the distance between the "sound prison" and the core of my ears. You know better why this choked sound is reminiscent of centuries of killings, invasions and tyrannies.

My dear friend! We assembled for a year or a little more, talked about writing a new charter, rejuvenating that 30-year old. I mean the [old] charter of the Kanoun, the [Iranian] writers association. After thinking, talking, shouting, sulking, reconciling, we eventually wrote it by "consensus". That is we all agreed. Those present signed it, and those absent signed it too. We had decided to gather, to renew the association even though it had always existed in all those years, even if it was not officially registered in a book or notary’s office.

From now on we "will triumph, and be on record" [1] it was decided that some of us: Golshiri, Darvishian, Koushan, Puyandeh, Mokhtari, Kardevani, and Dowlatabadi would put our names under the invitation and prepare to fit out the "office". During these preparations a notice arrived. The "flight of the pigeon" is forbidden [1]. And a summons: report to the Revolutionary Court for some clarifications.

After days of suspense and questioning they were told: "You may go now! till later". As simple as that! Though not exactly that simple. "What is there to say".

My friend. You are a person of logic. You know more or less about what has happened. Tell me what was extraordinary in what we wanted to say or do? We wanted to say "We are writers" [2]. We want to think and write, but freely, without fear of an invisible shot which finished some of us off. We wanted to say: give us recognition so we can defend our professional rights, to be allowed to use social security. To have a legal existence and take steps in "civil society". We are not hooligans nor subversives. We are only writers. We want good for the world, the world within which we deserve a little space, and have the right to breather its lead-polluted air. Have words to express in a tale or a poems, or a thought and idea seated on paper but not fearful and ashen.

Yes we wanted, but they told us "banned!" write and sign all of you not to write and sign from now on. Kanoun no Kanoun! Writer no writer. That is all!

Some obeyed. They wrote and signed. What else could they do. That was the order of the ruler! The tape in the "sound prison" played on. It was Shajarian. What a groan that violin had:

Woe to these times!

O my heart, shed blood and bring blood!

Rain it on desert and plain

Trees shed their leaves with every breeze, as if these were yellow and red pieces of their heart.

You saw what transpired. Two nights ago we were ten, calm, cautious but determined and openly insisting on the principle that we "are" and we "write". We speak the truth. We have committed no offence. And this is enough for being on record in all books and every era. Is that not so?

Is there anyone out there to ask what is the purpose of such shackles on the hands and feet of writers?

We will write, here and there, or wherever. Today, silence is an idea which flees the tape recording box, rides the waves from one part of the world to another and returns. The moon does not stop under the clouds. Satellites carry the sounds and pictures around the earth. Is there any wall that can block these waves? While we speak, while we write, while we have breath our existence is assured. We do not need to be registered anywhere.

We are the flowing stream, sometimes we are waterfalls, sometimes a flood. Who can order the stream not to flow. The wise person is the one who channels the water for cultivation and development, not for ruin and death. Those who block the flow, their destiny is death. Remember Parvin E’tesami. She said: "bring soberness, nobody is sober here!"

Dear friend

You answered my letter. I have to write you a new letter. But with what heat, what mood? I wrote in my last letter that there were barely ten of us. I mean those present at the consultative gathering of the writers’ association [Kanoun]. Alas! Two of those ten have gone, strangled, now buried under the earth. I ma speaking of Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad-Ja’far Pouyandeh. They were two of seven writers who were meant to call on other writers to sign the Kanoun’s Charter. Or more accurately, among the six, because Dowlat-Abadi was away on a trip.

I no longer have the stomach to listen to Shahidian’s tape. My heart is full of night and yelling. As if I cannot believe. On December 3 they say Mohammad Mokhtari has been lost. Laughing I say, "is he a 2-year old child to be lost?" But it is true. He is lost. His wife and his elder son call on every hospital, and every Komitee [3], prison, forensic pathologist, and cemetery. No news. What they must have gone through, poor things? What dread! Every ring of the telephone, every tiny knock on the door, the second a step sounded outside their apartment, the heart of his wife, of his young boy and his 13-year old son must have missed a beat. And still no news. Finally on Wednesday December 9 his body, which had been was found some days earlier next to the Shahr Rey cement factory and taken to the forensic morgue, was handed over to his family.

I go to Mokhtari’s house. The room is full of women and men in black. I know most of them. Maryam is stupefied by her husband’s death. Her eyes, like two empty bird nests, is deep, dark and without expression. The long arch of her eyebrows is broken. Her hair hangs loose under the black mourning scarf. Mokhtari’s sister is crying: "what a calamity has befallen us" she says "we aren’t even allowed to breathe". I suddenly explode. I am out of control: "why?" I say. "Breathe, moan, scream, become a missile! Breathe while you have breath! Why can’t you? Tomorrow, all of us, inevitably, will stop breathing!"

I could not cry. I made arrangements for the funeral and went home with a bleeding heart. The same evening I hear that Mohammad-Ja’far Pouyandeh is lost. No laughter this time! No saying, "was he a 2-year old child?" I beat my head with my fists. Tears flow. On Thursday December 10, Azar Mahlouji rings me Sweden. She told me Pouyandeh had met the same fate as Mokhtari. "Heaven forbid!" I say. "There is no such news here". On Friday another friend rings from Germany with the same news. On Saturday December 12 the news was officially confirmed in Teheran: They found his body in Shahryar. Strangled. Exactly like Mokhtari’s body. "They are strangling the voices," I say.

Maryam says: Mokhtari had gone to buy milk, bread and yoghurt, but turned up in the cement factory. Sima says Pouyandeh had gone to the publishers union, in Hoghughi Avenue, but was found in a Shahryar alleyway.

Dear friend, for over 40 days we have gone from the Foruhars funeral, to the funeral of Hamid Mossadegh, that of Mohammad Mokhtari, Mohammad Ja’far Pouyandeh’s funeral: From one graveyard to another, from this mosque to that, from this commemoration to another commemoration.

Sometimes we gather together. Of that original ten, two are lost, and one had gone to Sweden to give a lecture before the stranglings. I mean Mansur Kushan. This should have left only seven. But no, we are now many. Death is a great warner. It has drawn us closer together. We "bereaved" have come together. "The murderers must be seized by the collar and sent to justice!" we tell ourselves. Strange! Last week it was admitted that security officials from the ministry of information (intelligence) have had a hand in the recent events. The cat is out of the bag! They weren’t just one of two either. They don’t even reveal their names. It is not the business of the people? They don’t count.

I say again the murderers are the very same people who summoned some of us after they had murdered Sai’di Sirjani in prison. [4] They told us "we didn’t want that. He just died himself!" Now don’t hold any commemorative services for him. Don’t raise your voice. And those few writers delivered that message to their colleagues. We all obeyed that order. Just like an obedient child!

I say again to myself: had we not kept silent in the death of Sa’idi Sirjani, Mir Ala’i, Tafazzoli, Ghaffar-Hosseini, and Zalzadeh and had we seriously followed the affair of Farj Sarkuhi [5], had we breathed, had we shouted, we would not have to erect the foundation of a new Kanoun on the bodies of two new martyrs.

Maybe this is the foundation for a temple whose gods get drunk on the blood of their victims. But I am fed up with obeying a blood-thirsty god. Anyway, freedom demands a heavy price.

Dear friend. I have given you a headache. My first letter was a preface or a premonition of these calamities. That is why its structure was so sad. This one is a supplement and completes it. Put them together.

Good-buy

Simin Behbahani

January 8, 1999

Simin Behbahani is one of Iran’s most respected poet and writer. She has been closely involved in the bid to recreate the Kanoun inside Iran and in the campaign against censorship.